Four-tenths of a second.

In the normal course of life, you can't really accomplish much in that short amount of time, except maybe blink.

But in the time it takes you to blink, the Penn State men's swimming and diving team secured the second of its two wins against Iowa and Missouri during a two-day meet in Iowa City.

The Nittany Lions (6-1, 1-0 Big Ten) defeated Iowa, 227-136, and Missouri, 189-178, during a double dual meet.

With the win against Big Ten opponent Iowa (2-9, 0-6) in hand midway through Saturday's session of swimming, the Lions focused their attention on getting a second, non-conference victory against the Tigers (6-2).

Following the first session of swimming on Friday night, the Lions led the Tigers 94-89. The score remained close until the final second of the final event of the weekend -- the 400-yard freestyle relay. During that event, the team of freshman Sean Biedermann, sophomore Dan Kaiserian, junior Shawn McLin and senior Patrick Johansson finished just four-tenths of a second ahead of second-place Missouri to seal a two-win weekend for the Lions.

"It was awesome. We had a sense with about four events left that it was going to come down to the relay, and that's the position that we wanted to be in," Penn State coach Bill Dorenkott said.

The team had confidence in its relay going into the final event because the Lions won all the previous four relay events during the weekend.

Johansson, McLin, senior Daryl Northrop and freshman Kyle Miranda won the 200-yard medley relay. McLin, Northrop and Miranda then teamed with junior Chris Ippoliti to finish first in the 400-yard medley relay.

The 200-yard freestyle relay was won by Northrop, Johansson, Kaiserian, and Ippoliti, while McLin, Biedermann, freshman Josh Graham and senior Dustin Thompson won the 800-yard freestyle relay.

With only one more regular season meet remaining on the schedule before the Big Ten Championships on Feb. 24, the Lions seemed to have gained well-timed momentum.

"We needed a meet like this. We needed to be put in a position where we needed to stand up and duke it out. The guys stepped up to challenge," Dorenkott said.

The Lions will look to finish the season strong when they host Big Ten rival Ohio State on Friday and Saturday.